The present disclosure relates generally to measuring the performance of radio access networks. Specifically, the present disclosure is directed to determining quality of radio access network transmissions.
Wireless networks and the use of mobile computing devices in communication with wireless networks are ubiquitous. Advances in mobile computing have led to ever faster and more sophisticated mobile computing devices. However, in many cases, the performance of wireless communication networks, and in particular cell phone networks, limits the ability of a user to access the Internet, make phone calls, or otherwise use a mobile computing device to its fullest capability.
Because of the occasional deficiencies of wireless communications networks (particularly cell phone networks), a wireless service provider will analyze the performance of its network to identify locations and root causes of network deficiencies. Correcting the causes of these deficiencies improves the performance of the networks, increasing user satisfaction and improving the competitive position of the service provider in the marketplace.
However when analyzing performance deficiencies, wireless service providers generally focus on coarse measures of network performance that are conveniently measured by accessing data describing the performance of a particular radio network transceiver (“e-node B”). These measures can include bandwidth entering and exiting a particular cell phone tower, or the number of available frequencies transmitted to and from a particular tower. These coarse measures are used to determine a channel quality index (“CQI”) that is based primarily on a comparison of an actual data throughput of a radio access network transceiver compared to a theoretical maximum value of data throughput of the RAN transceiver. This is a coarse performance gauge and does not, however, specifically identify the quality of use that is experienced by specific users of mobile computing devices.
In some cases, typically in response to a customer complaint, a wireless service provider will identify a more precise measure of CQI by sending a query to the mobile computing device associated with the complaining user. The query accesses data stored by the computing device that is more descriptive of the quality of wireless service experienced at the user device than the coarse measures of CQI that are more commonly used to monitor network performance.
However, accessing device-specific data in this way is inconvenient for both the user and the wireless service provider. Furthermore, this more precise method of determining a CQI is limited to only the device receiving a query from the wireless service provider. As such, this CQI method is inadequate for identifying transmission issues having systemic causes, such as device geographic location, device type, device characteristic, or other similar factors.